For Release: January 24th, 2000
The New York Times called Harriette Arnow's 1954 novel The Dollmaker a "masterwork," and the New York Herald Tribune hailed its "extraordinary power." The Dollmaker tied for best novel in the Saturday Review's 1954 national critics' poll and placed second--behind William Faulkner's The Fable--in the National Book Awards.
Host Bill Goodman and guests discuss The Dollmaker Tuesday, Feb. 1 at 8:30/7:30 p.m. CT on KET2. The program repeats on KET Tuesday, Feb. 8 at 12 a.m./11 p.m. CT and Saturday, Feb. 12 at 12:30 p.m./11:30 a.m. CT.
At the heart of The Dollmaker is Gertie Nevels, a loving, courageous woman, whose dream of owning land in her native Kentucky is destroyed when her husband goes to work in a Detroit factory. Gertie embodies a generosity of spirit that transforms and ennobles human suffering.
Harriette Simpson Arnow was born in Wayne County in 1908. She spent two years at Berea College, taught briefly in Pulaski County, and then completed her degree at the University of Louisville. In 1939, she married Chicago newspaperman Harold Arnow. Five years later, the couple moved to Detroit, where Arnow wrote her first best-seller, Hunter's Horn, and began work on The Dollmaker.
To learn more about The Dollmaker and other bookclub@ket selections, readers can visit the bookclub@ket Web site-- http://www.ket.org/bookclub. The March selection is When Cuba Conquered Kentucky, Marianne Walker's tribute to small-town Kentucky basketball.
bookclub@ket is a KET production. Liz Hobson is executive producer, and Janet Whitaker is producer/director. The series is closed-captioned for the deaf and hard-of-hearing. Viewers can find out more about programming on KET by visiting the KET Web site at http://www.ket.org, a Kentucky.com affiliate.
Contact: Mary Duncan
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